The Dancing Plague of 1518

In July 1518, in the city of Strasbourg, then part of the Holy Roman Empire and now in France, a woman known as Frau Troffea stepped into the street and began to dance. She kept going for days. Within a week dozens of others had joined her, and by August, according to historian John Waller, about 400 men, women and children were caught up in it. The outbreak lasted into September.

The city's leaders first decided the dancers needed to dance it out. They opened guild halls, the meeting halls of trade groups, for the dancers, built a wooden stage, and hired musicians and strong people to hold the dancers up. That made things worse, because it put the dancers in public view and drew more people in. The council then banned public dancing and music and sent the dancers to a shrine of Saint Vitus in the hills, where, according to accounts of the time, they were given red shoes sprinkled with holy water and marked with crosses.

How many people died is not clear. Waller, who studied the city records and chronicles, wrote of dozens of deaths, and some retellings say 15 people died a day. But the records made by the city during the outbreak do not give a number of deaths, or even say for certain that anyone died. The reports of deaths come from accounts written later.

Waller, writing in The Lancet in 2009, argued that this was a case of mass psychogenic illness, in which fear and stress spread through a group and cause real physical symptoms. In the years before 1518 the region suffered famine, disease and bitter cold. Many people also believed Saint Vitus could punish sinners by making them dance. In that setting, Waller argues, people fell into a trance-like state and could not stop.

Waller points out that the city authorities' own orders, written while the outbreak was happening, still survive. That is one reason this case is better documented than most stories of its kind.